Incarnation
by Auua Ytjoml
Summary: The legends speak of a hidden lake or perhaps a crystal cavern or a simple tree...the resting place of the the greatest magician to walk the earth... Merlin. But the truth was more complicated and Arthur didn't understand. (post 5x13. Cannon Future Fic.)
1. A Lake, A Cave, A Tree

**A/N: Another drabble. To readers of Down at the Tavern, I'm working on re-writing the lost chapters.**

_"Why did you do it?"_

_The other man shakes his faded grey locks. Arthur persists. _

_"Merlin."_

_The tea in the cup grows cold as the mead in the mug grows warm._

_"You asked me to never change."_

_Arthur wisely keeps his mouth shut as wizened warlock curls gnarled hands around the mug and drinks deeply._

_"But it was already too late."_

OOO'OOO`OOO

My tears dripped down my face long after the warmth seeped from your body. Finally I stood. I knew you must be taken to Avalon regardless. If Destiny could truly never be halted then I knew you must rise again. You _must_.

But the 'assurance' was nothing of the sort. For years I had lived only for you. The war, the secrets, the senseless dying on all sides... it broke something inside me... still don't know how to fix it. You, Arthur, were my light, my purpose, my sanity. When you died...

I saw you on your way, laid out in a small boat piled high with incense offerings to the sidhe. They took you across and when I lost sight of you I lost it and tried to follow.

OOO'OOO`OOO

_"And I saw a vision of a pale child with water dripping from his black hair as if he had been drowned."_

_"I cannot apologize for something I would do again."_

_Arthur shifts as if to reach out to the man he no longer knows whether to term friend... or once a friend. The slumped figure across the table flinches and Arthur draws back._

OO'OO`OO

For a year and a day I rotted as the prisoner of those with mirth in place of morals in the Land of Silver Apples. After the appointed span they returned me to Camelot. What was left of it. Time with the sidhe passes as they do, erratically or not at all as it pleases. For me, one year had lasted nearly seventy years. Camelot was in ruins and the only thing left of our work were the tales of 'what had been'. Already our mistakes were forgotten. Already I was a hero of the people come to separate the wheat from the chaff and you, the repentant Pendragon, come to make penance for the evils of your name.

I tried to tell them it wasn't like that. That neither led the other. That we were both servants. That we were closer than brothers. They wouldn't listen to me Arthur. Didn't believe me when I told them who I was. Kicked me out of their circles and cast my words into the muck. To them Emrys was a Warlord and the Pendragon was just an example of his mercy.

The she came. Viviane. She reminded me of them all; Freya, Morgana, Nimueh. Another young witch with so much potential and so much spirit. I swore that she would not meet the fate of the rest and when she asked me to teach her I could not resist.

Her spell appeared of apple blossoms and I did not see how I grew weak as she grew strong until it was too late. She left me near the Crystal Cave, close enough, or so it seemed, to death, to satisfy her. I knew I was not likely to die but was also determined that she would never use my power. I drug myself to the cave and, with the last of my strength, brought it down around me.

OO'OO`OO

_Arthur remains silent long after Merlin pauses in his tale. He doesn't move, doesn't even so much look at the man, at last driving the morose warlock to, for the first time since Arthur had found him, initiate an interaction._

_"So?"_

_Arthur smiles where Merlin cannot see it and at last raises his head. "So what?"_

_"What did that show you?"_

_His tone is belligerent but at least it's something. Arthur continues acting the fool in hopes of arising his friend still more._

_"What makes you think it showed me anything?"_

_Merlin growls. Arthur holds back a delighted smirk. _

_"How else would you know? Why else would you ask me? I know what you thought. That I killed myself, or tried to. That I was weak. Cowardly"_

_Arthur's heart dives._

_"Never." _

_With a single word Arthur cuts off the rising tide of loathing, directed at the both of them, from Merlin's eyes. _

_"Never, Merlin. You have never been weak and have never been a coward. I have not thought so for a long time."_

_The anger turns inward in an instant. "Then you fool yourself in saying you know me, for I am and have been both."_

_Arthur answers the original question. He wants Merlin to feel something, but not this. Not this hatred towards him, and himself, and the world._

_"I saw the body of a man in his prime crushed and broken with no apparent cause and with no means of repair. Without knowing why, I wept."_

_Merlin curls inwards over his drink._

_"I see."_

O'O`O

I was both aware and unaware. The Cave lay in shambles around me. Slabs of crystal roof crushed my body in a manner that would have killed any other but I could not be killed. Surrounded by the heart of magic I could not even decay or fester. I simply was. For too long I drifted amongst the visions as the magic turned the stone to dust and my flesh healed. When I was as whole again as I could be the cave pushed me to venture out again into the world. In my absence, three hundred years had passed.

By this time we were nothing more than pleasant legends. Bedtime stories - nice to tell of around the hearthfire at night but nothing more. The King had become a young man, unproven in war or politics. Merlin the Magician became his aged advisor. With a demon for a father and a saint for a mother he was well able to speak of balance in the world. Vivian had lured him to his entombment, deciding the fate of his young ward for ill. Just another parody.

This time I did not attempt correction.

I lost myself in the passions of others. Music, theatre, invention, art, philosophy, astronomy. It was, in many ways a Golden Age like that we tried to build. But magic was dying. I didn't realize at first and when I did I denied it. There were those who told me to fight the decay, who swore to stand at my side. Leonardo never forgave me for my refusal.

In the end even as Avalon withdrew and the world withered my magic only increased. A single storehouse for the magic of acres and eons. The world changed and as that generation died off I grew less and less able to see through the haze. The magic was consuming me and every day I drew more distant. The next century brought more death and ruin than any I had known before. I could not escape it wherever I fled nor could I change it, my efforts focused instead on preventing the magic within from destroying me. I could not direct it outwards.

O'O`O

_Arthur speaks when Merlin will not._

_"I found you within weeks of returning and did recognize you for another decade. Did you not see me? Feel my presence on the earth?"_

_Slowly, slowly, Merlin shakes his head._

_"You must understand what is to be a tree. Though my roots were of magic and my fruit of illusion I was no less one of that glade then any other tree of bark and heartwood. We are a slow folk. Slow in action and slower in thought. I did not begin to process the signs of your return until years after they first appeared. I was not truly convinced of their veracity until you stood before me, begging me to return. I could not refuse."_

O

I returned to Britain. The United Kingdoms, united through war and deprivation, sorrow and starvation, were much changed since I had last traversed their lands but our Camelot was most changed of all. Nothing more than a scattering of villages, there remained not even a ruin to tell the truth of our story.

Atop the hill where the castle once stood I made my stand. Gathering the magic within me I released all but one of my shields and that protected only my memories. My mind may have been safe but the malestorm of magic tore me from my moorings and when I returned to my senses I was somewhere deep within the heart of a great tree. I knew the language of men and of my own part in their history but it was an objective knowing, with no feeling behind it. I _felt_ only the pulse of my veins, the flexing and unfurling of my leaves, the extents of my branches and the reflected image that was my roots. I felt only the wind in my branches, the absence of a storm stricken limb, the water sucked up my roots and the sunlight absorbed by my greenery. In all purposes I was as you first saw me.

O

_Arthur nods, finally understanding._

_"And the first thought in my head when I stepped onto earthly land... an elderly man with gray hair and greyer contenance... an apple tree."_

**Comments, commplements, critiques all welcome as always...**


	2. A Word, A Tear, A Promise

**Part two.**

"Yes."

"For all this time."

Merlin stumbles to his feet and walks away. Arthur is not surprised by this sudden dismissal. Not anymore. If anything, he feels very much like the untried youth kneeling at the feet of a wizened elder.

It is not that Merlin is more acustomed to the ways of the world than Arthur. If anything it is the reverse. In the decade since he'd appeared in the likeness of a child on the earthen slopes of Caerleon he had assimilated to the modern world, both its technology and its culture. Merlin, in the weeks since he had become a man once more, had refused any contact with the wider world. The village of Camelot, with a courthouse, a grocerers, and a pub as the sole public buildings, is enough for him. Even Arthur's presence is more tolerated than welcomed.

It is not that Merlin acts as if he has any wisdom or special insight to bestow. If anything he reveals no other sides than those of tired of life and angry at it in turn.

It is more that Merlin's anger is so all encompassing, his shame so deeply rooted, his grief so secretly hidden, that Arthur is left incapable of understanding the intensity of the emotion. It overwhelms him and leaves him behind while his friend stomps off again.

"Merlin!"

Arthur tosses some change on the counter and runs after him. Outside the sky is too blue to be believed and directly above the town streaks of gold create a permanent sunset, residue from the magic released upon Merlin's awakening. Chaos is already rearing its ugly head as powers absent from the world for centuries suddenly make themselves known... and utilized. Merlin had saved the world of magic when it was unable to sustain itself and Arthur had been revived to restore magic to the world and protect Albion throughout the upheavel of its return.

But before all that, Arthur is determined to heal his friend.

"_Mer_lin! Wait up will you? I'm not letting you run away, you idiot!"

The elderly persona halts in his tracks.

"_What_ did you call me?"

Arthur catches up but remains standing several feet behind his elderly seeming friend.

"Idiot. I _called_ you an idiot."

Merlin turns. The process is so incremental that Arthur wonders if Merlin has half forgotten he's human again, with a human's reflexes in place of a tree's.

"And just _why_, would you use that _particular_ word to insult me?"

His voice is gravelly with fury and something else that Arthur can't quite put a finger on, but fury, yes. Merlin is furious and Arthur has no idea why. Uncertain of cause and unable to predict what might set him off furthur, he elects to tell the truth.

"Becuase you _are_ an idiot. You always have been and I suspect you always will be."

He is half expecting his words to ignite a magically inclined fit against his person. Instead, to his complete confusion, Merlin's golden eyes release a tear.

"Hey now. No need to cry. Being an idiot isn't all bad. I, for one, have noticed their knack for a certain... well its not precisely _wisdom_ mind you, but..."

His attempt at humur falls flat as far as he can tell. Another tear joins the first and then Merlin is clinging to him, his wiry muscles and brittle bones surprisingly capable of keeping him completely immobile.

"_Mer_lin! Merlin! Merlin?"

He recieves no response beyond the tears soaking through his sweater and weting his t-shirt. The silent tears turn to racking sobs and it's all Arthur can do to haul his friend off of the main street into the private garden of a mutual aquainence.

Merlin's face is a blotchy red through his straggly beard and Arthur is begining to worry that he'd accidentally broken his friend irrepairably when at last Merlin's incorherant sobs give way to words- fragments of sentences that are so charged with emotion that Arthur loses focus of anything else.

"Arthur... Arthur... _Arthur..._ really here... You're really real... not just a dream... oh gods... not a dream...'m so sorry... Arthur... gods... Arthur..."

There, hidden away in the yard of a small cottege, in an insignificant village, in one of the smaller countries in a world on the verge of collapse Arthur finally learns something about the boy who'd challanged a prat to a fight all those years ago in Camelot. He _was _an idiot and a fool and he _was _an all powerful warlock who also happened to be immortal. But he was also a man who didn't see people... he saw souls. He saw light in the darkness and wonder in the trees. For the man he'd once been the world was full of life, every spawning insect and every dying man a part of something greater than any possible understanding and something more intiment than any concivable denial. _Life was love._

And Merlin had lost that. He had been _destined_ to _protect_ the one person whom he loved more than any other, with a love far deeper than that of lovers, deeper than those of familial bonds, as deep as the very bond between man and God. He had been _born_ solely to ensure the life of that one man, and had _failed_.

Was it any wonder then, that Merlin had died slowly and painfully in a process that drove away those he might have saved and abandoned those who still cared? Was it any wonder that fury warred with shame when Arthur finally returned? Was it any wonder that he remained incapable of expressing his grief and therefor incapable of remembering how to experience joy? how to _live_?

Merlin lifts his hands, tracing Arthur's face in phantom gestures that don't make contact but memorize every change. His faded appearence darkens, the grey hair turning black, gray skin warming to a pale tan, faded cloathing brightening to a cheery compilition of red and blue and brown. And at long last Merlin is truly alive again.

Eventually the two young men stand together and meet eachother's gaze. Merlin frowns.

"Never leave me again."

"Never." Arthur promises.

He never does.

**So... What do you think? I've a mind to add a follow up or two if enough readers want to see them. Otherwise I'll probably leave these two stand on their own. Comments, critiques and the lot all welcome and asked for (though I won't give you anything for them except perhaps some virtual chocolate cake :)**


End file.
